


Schism

by rainbowagnes



Series: Cisma [1]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Gen, Leia organa - Freeform, Meta, Revisionist History, a bit of text, everything leia does she does for the Alliance, explanation of events, getting meta, legacy, really - Freeform, space latinx
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-20
Updated: 2017-06-20
Packaged: 2018-11-03 15:33:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10970196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainbowagnes/pseuds/rainbowagnes
Summary: Years after Scarif, Leia makes a decision.Or- The Rogue One survive. It's how they are remembered that kills them.





	Schism

**Author's Note:**

> I listened to the brilliant song "Cancion Por El Fusil y la Flor," sung by Mercedes Sosa as I wrote this.
> 
> This is part of a much larger work that was about to expire about Cassian leading the Outer Rim territories into a schism from the Alliance between the OT and ST, and why there isn't any mention of the Rogue Squad later on. I might expand on it later.
> 
> In this version of events Cassian is currently heading a confederation of outer rim planets who broke away from the Alliance out of fear that the First Order was internally gaining a foothold. In return the Alliance tries to erase his and the Rogue Squad's names. 
> 
> I'm picturing this is still a few years before she sees the writing on the wall and decides to start the Resistance.

Leia doesn't like it, but she watches as their names are erased from the history books. 

It's what happened to her mother. History turned Padme Amidala into a nothing, a missed opportunity and a fallen woman who should have stopped her man or left him earlier- they can never decide which. History erases the senator, the leader, the warrior, and on the rare occasion they remember her name it all, it is as a footnote in the lives of men. A weak girl who was not enough. 

Leia remember ripping those pages from the books and burning them. Breha gave her a match.

It's what happens to the Rogue Squad. The pilot who bows to the traditions of Jedha before the Alliance is turned into a scared bit of comic relief for the holonovelas. The monk is a crazed mystic who never saw a thing and the assassin a soldier of fortune. 

The rebel was a heartless bastard who met an end that was coming for her, who did nothing to alter the stream of history. She was worth nothing, a privileged bitch who died alone in the sand. And the Captain?

The Captain is a terrorist. 

The Captain is violent and disillusioned and battle-struck. A good man with his heart in the wrong place. A man who's decision to lead his people into direct military conflict with the First Order is brash and uncalled for, an extremist strike against a non-existat threat. A man who's statement that the First Order is building another Death Star of massive proportions- information provided by his wife, none the less, the daughter of an Imperial Scientist- is a radical conspiracy theory. 

Every word makes Leia's breath hitch, and she knows how close she is to Cassian's same fate. It is a gross misinterpretation of events to say she and Cassian were in the same place- in the early days, there was not even blood to stain Leia's spotless gowns as she lived in a palace, surrounded by luxury. Cassian was the man who did the jobs she and her people recognized and talked about in rarified terms- intelligence work, inside man, collateral damage, terminate data leaks. 

But they bled for that same violent, early resistance. They spoke the same angry language, the boy born Festiano and the girl adopted into being Alderana. Drunk they sang the same boleros, their accents tripping in different directions, and they sat in very different places in the room as the Alliance discussed their losses, again and again and again. And when the meetings were over Cassian loaded his rifle and Leia walked into the Imperial Senate, teenagers with still-round faces doing the work of adults decades older. 

And on the Day of Death, their eyes met across a converted hangar as they lit candies for their departed. 

This is the rebellion that forged Leia, scrappy and violent and bloody and unapologetically in Lingua Alderana, and it's not the rebellion that she must lead now, twenty years down the line and solidified into a coalition.

A coalition that wants to erase the Rogue One from their children's minds, discredit the man who has left the Alliance to fight a war that, deep in her heart, Leia knows is inevitable. 

But what can she do? Cassian Andor has a mere ten or eleven billion souls to think of. Leia has a galaxy. Leia must allow the Alliance, the peace and stability and prosperity it brings, to last as long as possible. To do what is must to survive.

The decision torments her. Leia has always valued the greater good. It's what's made her an effective leader from the time she was a teenager. She sees not people or towns or even planets but the shape of the universe, the events that will save the most lives possible, and she enacts them. She is Bail Organa's daughter, but she swears she will not make his mistakes. 

There will never be another Alderaan. 


End file.
